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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640355">through clenched teeth, i'll say it</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aalgorithm/pseuds/aalgorithm'>aalgorithm</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Perdition to Elsewhere [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anti-Supernatural Finale, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, post 15x20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:01:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,885</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aalgorithm/pseuds/aalgorithm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has two big blue eyes. The first time Dean ever saw them they were framed in sparks and starlight and shotgun residue. But now, as he gazes upon them, there’s nothing more. There’s nothing else. They’re all he needs. They’re good, and real, and true, and fair.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Perdition to Elsewhere [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020997</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>through clenched teeth, i'll say it</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm breaking my 5-year Supernatural writing hiatus and wrote this in a frenzy. I will edit any typos. I bet there's tons. Furthermore, I have so many ideas for these two that have been festering over the years, so stay tuned for a catalogued series that makes more sense than all of Supernatural's canon.</p><p>- also, the change in tense is deliberate -</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>through clenched teeth, i’ll say it</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Lying through his goddamn teeth, he was.</p><p>And they ached, too. Dean was no longer sure of just where the rusty nail in the dingy, battered barn’s wooden beam had pierced him. The pain radiated in dull, humming throbs, tendrils that spread like spiders across his back. Sam’s fingers returned dripping red when he pulled away from his back, but the hurt was everywhere: his spine, his gut, his ribs, his neck, his knees, his jaw, and his goddamn teeth.</p><p>So, was he to hold his own teeth responsible, given their current state? How could they keep back the lies when gurgles of ichor bubbled in his throat and stained their whitish enamel rubicund?</p><p>It’d be unfair. Fuck, he deserved fairness now. Someone told him, the tiny voice wrapped in plaid little boys’ pajamas standing barefoot on a freshly mown lawn, bundle of a baby brother between his arms, that he deserved fairness here. He was going out without a blaze, without any glory, without the slightest inkling of a gunshot. The universal catch-all order he’d sought to dismantle had pulled the old bait ‘n switch and revoked fairness in favor of random chance. Or was this zero-sum? Had there been a chance at all for any involved parties?</p><p>No. Zero-sum implied two losers, both he and the greater Beyond. Surely the Big-U Universe wanted him limp and breathless. Why else would this be happening? Why else would his fingers be losing their feeling? God, the tingle was infectious. He craved for it to spread and to quell the hurt. It wouldn’t be long. If he could just close his eyes…</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">Focus</span>
  </em>
  <em>.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>Dean Winchester had been taught to lie for the greater good, the greater good that was his brother and those who existed in his kindred orbit. John made that clear and made the consequences even clearer. Sammy was not to be troubled if the trouble could be avoided. And there was a route out of this. Dean could see it splayed in the same shades of grey he’d swam through in years’ past.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">This isn’t fair.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>To hell with fair. Nothing is ever fair for you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">That’s the point. Isn’t that just total bullshit?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>“Dean…?”</p><p>Dean Winchester had long since entertained internal monologues. They weren’t productive. All of a sudden, however, he was encountering his last thoughts, yet even <em>they </em>weren’t sacred. They were being cut down the middle by a lumbering younger sibling who looked as though someone had cut a hole in their chest and was yanking out their heartstrings one by one.</p><p>That wasn’t fair, either. Dean knew that Sam’s suffering was not fair.</p><p>“Look at me,” Dean finally choked, watching in a delirium-fueled stupor as his brother listened, moved his eyes, and crumbled a bit more. “I…I-I…I need you to tell me. That it’s <em>okay</em>.”</p><p>Dean watched his brother’s eyes like two blurry targets (his vision was swaying now; the tingling had spread). They would shift. They would change. The dark of his irises would grow lighter again, and Sam would believe him. He would surrender. He always did. Dean was the best fucking liar in the family. He could do this, impaled through the spine or not.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">Why do we </span>
  </em>
  <span class="u">have<em> to lie?</em></span>
</p><p>
  <em>We always do.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">You know what’s missing here. You know what’s not okay.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>God, a man’s last thoughts were loud, only broken by Sam’s clammy palm reaching for Dean’s fully numb hand. Dean blinked at the touch. His eyelids were on fire. He smelled flesh and iron, somewhere faraway.</p><p> “Dean…” Sam muttered again. His eyes were squinted now in an attempt to subdue the tears, as though he was committing this terrible moment to memory. Dean may be the better liar, but they were both masochistic till the end.</p><p>“It’s <em>okay</em>.”</p><p>And, like clockwork, Sam was convinced.</p><p>Dean neither heard nor saw little of the time between his fourth, third, and second to last breaths, but the voices in his head raged. They sounded just like him, despite the former being way more impassioned and the latter unsettlingly jaded. As his stare slid down Sam’s person, their foreheads eventually colliding with a defunct <em>thunk!</em>, he let the voices have their way with him and resolved to choose a side just as his lungs flexed their last.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">It’s so fucking obvious.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And what are we supposed to do about it now?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">You’ve had years. </span>
  </em>
  <span class="u">Years<em>. This isn’t fair to anyone.</em></span>
</p><p>
  <em>We can’t repay the dead.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">What, not even when you have God’s cell number on speed dial?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And you really think he’d pick up? He didn’t bother to resurrect him before he walked off.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">He’s not the brightest goddamn tool in the brightest of goddamn sheds. But he’s new to the job. A formal request might have come in handy.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And what would have come after that, huh?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">Doesn’t matter now. We failed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><em>Deserved fairness, my </em>ass<em>.</em></p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">We can’t be this bitter in the afterlife.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Watch us.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>“You can go now.”</p><p>Dean didn’t want that bitterness. No, he’d never wanted it. He’d built it up, constructed monuments to its name, lined his innards with the stuff, carved moats of lies and back alleys out of those testy, sweaty conversations, hammered the windows shut with broken, almost-something stares, bolted the doors closed with unsaid words, huddled in the dungeons upon every resisted touch.</p><p>But, damn it to hell or wherever he was being fast-tracked to, he’d snuck glances. He’d ventured beyond the walls. He’d let the warmth linger, the kind you can’t find elsewhere, the kind they manufacture “upstairs” but, even then, a special kind of it. He’d peered in between the windowpanes and stuck his fingers out between the cracks, pining until he remembered his job. His duty. His lies.</p><p>Dean was lying. This was not okay. He was lying to Sam. Through his clenched teeth, no less. <em>Nothing</em> was okay. There was someone missing here. There was an absence so palpable that it halted the tingling, halted Dean’s demise for agonizing, painful seconds.</p><p>There was supposed to be a head of dark hair and huge, concerned eyes and hands that dealt Dean’s drug of choice – that fucking <em>warmth</em> – standing just where he wouldn’t expect, where he couldn’t quite see.</p><p>Dean had lied to Castiel’s face when the Empty had taken him. It wasn’t an out-loud lie, nor was it intentional, but Dean was such a good deceiver at the tender age of forty-something that sometimes the absence of a response can would morph into a lie all its own.</p><p>He’d left Castiel hanging. Even as Cas tried to anchor Dean into the oncoming reality, the one of which he was no longer a part, placing that same hand on that same shoulder, and waltzing into the big black nothing, Dean had left him hanging. How was that his greatest happiness? How was that Castiel’s “okay?”</p><p>Had his lying rubbed off on Cas, too? Was he <em>better</em> at it than Dean?</p><p>If he’d corrupted an angel to that degree, Heaven didn’t seem likely.</p><p>Dean was really dying now. His hands were drooping away from Sam’s, who was trying to cry out to him, but Dean knew the fib had landed well enough. It was written all over his face like answers to an A+ test. So Dean turned his attention to a new pressure in his chest in between the broken ribs and rickety lungs. And it was familiar. It was tight and snug and precise. It reached for his throat and burned his eyelashes.</p><p>           </p><p>
  <em>So we’re crying now?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">Shit is unfair. The least we can do is be unhappy about it. It sends a message.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t in a hail of bullets. It wasn’t blazing. Nor was it glorified. Dean was crying as he died, a chunk of his final lie laying at his feet. Sam probably couldn’t see it quivering through the tears, but Dean only knew through intuition. His own sight was reduced now to a myriad of colors, shapes, pieces of a story warped beyond recognition. The broken piece of deceit lay like a kicked dog beside Dean’s left shoe, and he had half a mind to throttle it awake as his life’s last hurrah, at least until he spent his last breath heaving a sob through his fractured chest, shattering the illusion to pieces.</p><p>Things weren’t okay. Cas should be beside him. If he was to go, he just wanted to tie that loose end. He wanted to undue that lie, if nothing else.</p><p>This wasn’t fair. He’d never been treated fairly. Standing before the blazing effigy of his childhood home, Dean Winchester had never been treated fairly. And maybe that was his “okay,” but Castiel was paying the price, and never had Dean wanted to revolt for something more. Yet through clenched teeth, the universe forbade it.</p><p>           </p><p>
  <em>
    <span class="u">Spoke too soon.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Son of a bitch.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sam drifts away from Dean, though Dean can’t tell exactly when or how. There’s new firmness to his neck all of a sudden but as his hands reach to examine the surge of strength, he’s removed from the wooden post of the dingy, battered barn. There’s a stitching heat in the center of his being and then there’s nothing. Dethroned like Jesus Christ being preemptively removed from the cross, Dean wonders who botched the execution job. He laughs at the thought; the voices in his head are quieter.</p><p>It takes both a lifetime and not even a second to discover the culprit.</p><p>“Jack sends his apologies. He’s…overwhelmed. With all the work. But he says he’s checked in on you two regularly, and this is the first spot of trouble that’s come up.”</p><p>Dean’s eyes are still on fire, but he manages a blink. Then a breath. Then another blink, though the second attempt is flooded with tears.</p><p>“Are you alright, Sam?”</p><p>Sam is a puddle on the floor. His jeans are flecked with hay and the ichor of the decapitated vampires. There’s a bruise forming on his chin that spreads into the age lines on his right cheek, lines that Dean hadn’t noticed yet. Sam is collapsed and staring in reverence at two rectangular legs flanked in thin black fabric and shoes scuffed at the toes, but only recently.</p><p>Dean wants to be on that cross again.</p><p>"How…how did…Dean, he –”</p><p>“Jack meant to come himself. But he couldn’t make it, so he lifted me from the Empty. I…don’t really know the details. But –”</p><p>“You…Dean is…?”</p><p>Two lips, the shade of not-yet-bloomed tulips, turn to Dean. If he looks down, he sees a loose collar and an even looser tie, royal blue and twisted, framed by khaki lapels and undone enamel buttons. Beside the pair of lips are two sagging cheeks, signs of age inexplicable, dotted with brown stubble; atop the cheeks and to the right and left are ears that twitch upon impact, and Dean notices a slice running down one lobe. He remembers thumbing it and inquiring about its origin. The dam of tension swelling in Dean’s throat breaks.</p><p>“Dean is fine.”</p><p>Castiel has two big blue eyes. The first time Dean ever saw them they were framed in sparks and starlight and shotgun residue. But now, as he gazes upon them, there’s nothing more. There’s nothing else. They’re all he needs. They’re good, and real, and true, and fair.</p><p>“Yes?” Cas asks. Dean feels that, if he answers, he’ll land on the nail again, so he doesn’t reply. He stares, and he nods, and he watches as relief washes Cas’s face in pink before Sam rises from the floor and wraps his gangly monkey arms around the angel of Thursday, freely weeping into his trench coat, eyes flicking between savior and save-e.</p><p>“Cas, I don’t…” Sam chokes. The two rock back and forth together, one bewildered, the other the most religious he has been and ever will be. “I don’t know what to…how did you…”</p><p>Dean watches until his knees buckle, which earns everyone’s attention. Sam’s palms are splayed atop Dean’s knees and he squeezes with urgency. Cas’s hands, meanwhile, find the small of Dean’s neck and stroke. The tingling resumes.</p><p>“Dean!” Sam exclaims.</p><p>“I’m…I’m good…” he answers, daring to lean into the touch nearest his face. “Fine.”</p><p>His lips form over <em>Castiel </em>but break the shape when Cas turns his head to the left – always the fucking left – and drags his hand down to Dean’s shoulder.</p><p>“I almost didn’t make it in time,” he admits. “I’m sorry for the delay.”</p><p>Dean’s stomach is still turning even once he’s on his feet, and the events of the last three days are spinning like a rewinding VHS tape. Empty. Nothingness. Nobody. Jack is God. Cas is gone. Miracle the dog is at the bunker. Sam stares at photographs on his cellphone that he won’t let Dean see. Cas is gone. Dean hyperventilates at night until the dizziness puts him to sleep. Sam makes bacon in the morning. Dean realizes that Cas probably can’t hear his prayers anymore. Cas is gone.</p><p>Dean is a liar. Cas is gone. Without closure. Until he isn’t.</p><p>Cas’s grip is beneath Dean’s right shoulder, Sam’s beneath his left, and they’re carrying him to the car even though he’s in a fully stable condition. He lets it happen and realizes that he’s still crying; is <em>this</em> fair?</p><p>“You’ve…you’ve got a shirt in the trunk,” Sam declares, an archaeologist discovering the apex of his quest. “Wait here,” he instructs. “I’ll grab it. You’re full of…<em>fuck</em>, I don’t…this can’t be real…”</p><p>Cas props Dean against the barn’s exterior. To his right is a bale of hay, to his left a pitchfork, to his front a once-deceased angel looking as he did eons before. And he removes his grasp from Dean too suddenly, too confidently, as though it isn’t insanity incarnate that they were able to touch again in the first place.</p><p>“Cas…”</p><p>Cas is watching as Sam darts away. Moonlight bounces off his eyes and excitement thrums in between Dean’s panic at the moment he turns and confronts him with the full force of his gaze.</p><p>“I…I need to –”</p><p>“You two were reckless,” he interjects, a familiar venom on his tongue. “You wandered into a vampiric <em>lair</em> with two knives to your name. That’s irresponsible.”</p><p>Dean agrees but fails to convey this.</p><p>“Cas, listen, I need to –”</p><p>“You are lucky that Jack is so observant. He almost missed it. I couldn’t hear anything in there. In the Empty. I was totally blind when he pulled me out and had no idea where you and Sam were.”</p><p>Dean hears the trunk pop open.</p><p>“Cas. Please. I’m sorry. I need to tell –”</p><p>“Are there more of them? Usually vampires congregate in immense numbers. You know this, of course. I counted seven in the barn alone. We should check out the premises before –”</p><p>Dean is gripping Castiel’s collar before his mind catches up. The texture is known, almost soothing, so when Cas tilts his head once again, a dreadful realization dawning on his features, Dean squeezes. It’s firm. Concrete. Fair. Both Dean and Cas clench their teeth.</p><p>“Cas. Hold up. Please.”</p><p>Cas shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”</p><p>“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say,” Dean retorts as a tear spills across his lip. Salty.</p><p>“I always have a feeling.”</p><p>“You can’t hear prayers in the Empty.”</p><p>“I don’t need to hear them. I…I just know.” Cas sighs. “I’m relieved to have you alive, Dean. You can just leave it at that.”</p><p>Dean’s other hand lands on the opposite lapel and Cas’s head is bolt straight now. If Dean didn’t know any better, he’d say a pink flush was spreading from Cas’s left ear to his right.</p><p>“Fuckin’ hell, Cas, just let me talk, okay?”</p><p>“You don’t have to,” he repeats.</p><p>“I <em>want</em> to,” Dean says, searching for the lie though never discovering it. “Really.”</p><p>There’s not enough time to say what he needs to. Sam is closing the trunk and sprinting to them now, another spare Henley shirt balled up in his trembling fist. And Dean’s mouth is sewing itself shut. The sensation tells Dean that a large part of him wants to lie, wants to retreat behind those defenses he’s been taught to construct and maintain, but the other voice rings true. The other voice convinces Dean to take this moment of cosmic fairness in stride.</p><p>“I…thank you,” he starts, nodding to his chest. “That…that wasn’t the plan. Me getting offed.”</p><p>“It never is with you,” Cas spits. It’s in jest. It flutters underneath Dean’s skin.</p><p>“Yeah. You’re right. We’re…God, we’re stupid. Sam was tracking this hunt, we were lost back at the bunker, we drove in here without a plan. Without a thought. I guess…you know, we’re so damn used to having backup these days that we forgot what it’s like to fight alone.”</p><p>“Jack wouldn’t have let that happen.”</p><p>Dean is still gripping Cas’s coat.</p><p>“Y-yeah. I know,” he fibs. “But…shit, this isn’t…”</p><p>Sam’s figure looms large in the distance and Dean can’t help but look. A cold breeze hits the tears still tumbling down his face, and with a glance Sam pauses. His feet halt in their advance. He’s still.</p><p>Dean’s convinced him of a truth, for once.</p><p>“Fuck, Cas…”</p><p>Dean’s never had the courage to do what Cas did three days ago. Dean’s never said that to anyone, not really. Because it feels like a lie when it comes out. Dean’s love is so huge that it doesn’t physically fit into words.</p><p>But Cas redefined the expanse of such words, the worth of the phrase, the power its confirmation holds over them both. Dean wants to take a stab at it.</p><p>“You…you can’t drop shit like that on me. You <em>know</em> you can’t. And, fuck, I know why you did it. I…I just don’t get –”</p><p>“Dean.”</p><p>“Just…I didn’t <em>get</em> it. I don’t get those things. And you’re supposed to...dammit, Cas, we work these things out <em>together</em>, like we always –”</p><p>“You couldn’t have controlled or changed my deal with the Empty, Dean. Why do you insist on bearing responsibility for it?”</p><p>“That’s not –” except that’s exactly what it is, that and ten thousand more things. “You weren’t happy. Because of me. Don’t twist it. Don’t lie. For…God, for fuck’s sake, don’t lie to me anymore…”</p><p>Dean’s grip is loosening on Cas as his mouth grows stiffer and stiffer. He can’t remember the last time he’s heard the words he’s trying to say and pauses to wonder if Cas has ever heard them, himself.</p><p>“I’ve been shitty to you. I’ve been…unsure. And I didn’t mean for it to screw you over. I never meant that. It was <em>my</em> thing. I was dealing with it, but when you…when you…”</p><p>“I can’t take it back, Dean, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Cas drops into the fray, as seismic and affronting as ever. “But I hold you to no obligation. I…I needed to say it. And I meant it.”</p><p>“Fuck, I <em>know</em> that, okay? I’m trying to tell you that I <em>get</em> it now.” Dean finds purchase on Cas’s wrists and ignores the implication. “I…I’ve always got it, when I think about it. I didn’t think you did. That’s why I couldn’t say it. I’ve always wanted you to know that <em>it</em> – what <em>you</em> wanted, I mean – is here. It’s always been here. But I get <em>stuck</em>.”</p><p>“Again, I can’t force you to –”</p><p>“Dammit Cas, just let me have this one!”</p><p>He’s startled; hell, they both are. Cas’s pupils dilate and then come back to earth. Dean clears his throat, pierces through another sob, and ventures forward, beyond the defenses. He doesn’t cringe at the warmth. He says it through clenched teeth.</p><p>“It’s always been here. Before you, even, back when it was an even bigger secret. Always something I couldn’t have, so eventually I…I just told myself that I <em>wouldn’t</em> have it. Easier that way. I…I always fucking lie. Even when I don’t mean to. To myself. To you. To Sam. To Jack. To Mom. Dad, even. I <em>always</em> lied to him. But, shit…I…I still wanted it. All the time. When we were together. Apart. When I wanted to kick in your goddamn shins. When I wanted to…to search the damn planet for you. It was still there, but I can’t have it. So I push it down. And I thought that the longer it stayed down, the less it…the less <em>this</em> would <em>hurt</em>. Or, better yet, maybe this would just never happen. But then you <em>say</em> it out of the blue and leave me fuckin’ high and dry. You just <em>said</em> it. Like it was…<em>easy</em>. I don’t get it. I don’t get <em>you</em>. Never have. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t get how you’re everywhere you’re supposed to be and everywhere you’re not. I don’t get how you’re never gone. I don’t get the way you see the world, even though I want to. I don’t get how much you care. I’m jealous of it, actually. And I really don’t get why it’s me for you. I never, not even…<em>dammit</em>…I never thought, not even for a fucking second, that it was me. It shouldn’t be me. Cas. You know that. It shouldn’t be me. I’m no good. I’m a liar. I’m angry. I can’t…I can’t even say what you need to hear, even when it’s true, and it’s always been true…”</p><p>Castiel doesn’t move. He stands like a monument, like a statue, like a deity, because he is one, and watches Dean work through the muck of his own depressing story of never giving in, never having, never living, never enjoying. And it’s in Castiel’s stillness that he delivers the conclusion of his manifesto:</p><p>“I won’t say it’s not you, Dean. It’s always you for me. That’s what makes me happy.”</p><p>Dean Winchester and Castiel are standing under the cover of scant darkness together. Dean’s wounds are healed; Cas is clean of the Empty’s blackish sludge. Things feel real. They feel fair. His jaw relaxes.</p><p>“You make me happy,” Dean whispers before reaching back to Cas’s coat and closing their distance between them. It’s not just physical space that cleared, either; it’s years of unspoken truths, of quietude, of fleeting grazes, of sacrifices, of grace, of damnation, of tears, of anger, of hurt, of separation, reunion, embraces, scars, blood, stab wounds, Heaven, Hell, the tattered remains of a story that an angel of the deceased Almighty Lord had shriveled to pieces in Dean Winchester’s name.</p><p>“That’s all we can ask for these days,” Cas said into Dean’s cheek.</p><p>Dean Winchester is written across Castiel, as Castiel is written across Dean. They mutually inform each other. They make the other equally as neurotic, charmed, enraged, injured, shocked, and soft. They treat one another justly, tit-for-tat, eye for another weeping, lonely eye. They melt the same, depart the same, and meet in the middle the same. They are inseparable. They are equitable. They are fair. They deserve one another.</p><p>“I mean it, Cas.”</p><p>“I know you do.”</p>
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